Sometimes, when everything crashes down around you, you need to do the unexpected – even if it turns out to have ridiculous consequences.

My wife, Marie, looked good – really good. Almost edible, if I was into eating rat poison.

She approached the board room in the centre of the crowd of ass-wipes who purported to run the company, Acme Ltd, although most of the actual running was done so far beneath them that they would reach terminal velocity if they ever deigned to move down to that level of reality.

Marie was dressed in an elegantly tailored bespoke suit, the skirt a little shorter and the top a little tighter than most business executives would probably go for, but that was Marie for you. She had shapely legs and lovely round tits, and used them to her advantage in any and every business meeting. But not for me, her sad, fucked-up husband. Not anymore.

The group of corpulent men and slim, hard-bodied and always attractive assistants entered the boardroom and stared at me seated at the far end of the long, highly polished oak table, where the chairman – the almighty Mr. Max Collins – would normally sit. On one side of me were Dallas and Holmes, on the other was Warburton. Together, we were the ambush party – the gang of four. We were reinforced by Beth, who was taking down every word in shorthand to back up the recording. Her pen was already busy.

“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Collins, known far and wide for his straight-talking, shoot-from-the-mouth style of management.

“My name is Rob Bentley, gentlemen.”

As she heard my voice, my wife’s head whipped around to stare at me. She had been hobnobbing with the marketing director, John Forbes hyphen-something-or-other, and hadn’t seen me until that point. She hurried to my side.

“Rob, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Ah, Mr.s Bentley,” I said cheerily. “You’re the assistant marketing director, are you not?”

After a long moment as she tried to work out what was going on, she said, “Of course I am. You know that. Now you need to leave, right now.”

“Why don’t you take a seat, Mrs. Bentley. Although why an assistant marketing director is needed for a board meeting, I don’t really understand. I would have thought you would be busy working, rather than taking an extraordinarily long lunch and then being involved in a meeting with the members of the board.”

“Rob,” she hissed. “You’re embarrassing me. You need to get out of here right now!”

“I think I’m much too late to embarrass you, Mrs, Bentley. And I need to be right here, right now. So take a seat, and let’s see how the cards fall in this game.”

“Rob, we can talk later at home. Now get out!”

She had been using a hissing whisper up until that point. Her last words rose dramatically in pitch and volume.

Collins chipped in again. “Someone call security and get rid of these arseholes. And tell them someone is going to be looking for a job as soon as I find out who let them in.”

Warburton spoke up. “An extraordinary meeting of shareholders is now in session, gentlemen. Security is aware of our presence and our right to be here.”

“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Collins. I had no idea he was this much of a smooth-talker. He had risen through the ranks from salesman to sales director to chairman of the board by schmoozing and kissing ass and backstabbing. I’m not sure how he could have reached his position using such language. He must have let himself go a little. The size of his belly showed it wasn’t the only thing he had let go.

“Horace Warburton, senior partner of Warburton, Warburton and Holmes.”

“Who the fuck are they?” Collins was on a roll here.

“The company’s auditors.”

“And you’re here because why?”

“I am are here to ensure the extraordinary shareholders meeting is held in accordance with all the rules and regulations of the Companies Act, as amended in 2006 and 2013.”

“Look, I don’t know who you jokers are, but whatever you’re trying to sell, I’m not buying. So fuck off. Get out of my building!”

“I would remind you, Mr Collins, that the building is owned by the company, which is in turn owned by the shareholders.”

“I own the fucking shareholders! Now get out, whoever you are! And stop that fucking bitch from writing things down.”

Beth looked up and gave him a sweet smile. Damn, Beth was so pretty, and when she smiled...

Down Boy! Not the time! Then she poked her black-framed glasses further up her nose again, pushed an errant lock of her dark blond hair back behind her ear, and my stomach flipped. Man, she was pretty, and those lips...

She scribbled busily as Piper, the CFO piped up.

“Shareholders meetings require notification, and take place in a venue that allows all to attend if they wish.”

“This is an extraordinary shareholders meeting, Mr Piper. Beth, could you check to see if I mentioned that before?”

“Yes, Mr Warburton. You said ‘An extraordinary meeting of shareholders is now in session.’ To which Mr Collins replied ‘Who the fuck are you?’”

Damn, I loved it when Beth said ‘fuck’. As in ‘fuck me’. Okay, I had never heard her actually say that except in my fevered imagination. Although when she said ‘fuck you’ or fuck off’ to other guys, it was pretty neat as well. I smiled at her. She smiled back. Did I mention I love that smile?

“Notices were sent out two days ago, gentlemen. As required.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Crisp, the company secretary. “I haven’t received any notification of any such thing, and I would be the first to know.”

“And yet our records show that the notification by email was received and acknowledged as read.”

“Not by me it wasn’t,” he stated smugly.

“Apparently you haven’t been here for two days. I believe you’ve been on a team-building exercise. Strange that that would take place mid-week, but you make the policies...”

“I make the policies!” averred Collins. “And you can fuck off. If I say it happens mid-week, then that’s how it is.”

“Of course, you’re right,” said Warburton smoothly. “My audit clerks are going through those accounts and receipts for the team building days right now.”

I couldn’t help chipping in. “Ooh, have you been bad, bad puddy cats?”

“Fortune,” Collins said. “Get down there and sort it out. I’m not having any arse-wipes wandering in off the street and looking through our financial papers.

I noticed Charlie Fortune, the chief financial officer looked a little pale.

“You alright Charlie? You look a little under the weather. I’m sure the team building exercise was all above board, and not just some excuse to ah ... just stay in a five star hotel so you could all get pissed, have an orgy and fuck your assistants.”

“Rob!” Dallas put his hand on my arm.

“What,” I protested. “I said I was sure it wasn’t an excuse to do that.”

He gave me an old-fashioned look. Well, as the legal mind of the gang of four, he had every right to.

“Mr Collins,” said Warburton. His smooth method of delivery reminded me of that character Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects; infinitely smooth and always with just the right answer. “You might want to keep Mr Fortune on hand for the meeting. According to the share register he owns significant shares and may wish to vote.”

“He votes how I tell him to vote,” stated Collins with no fear of contradiction.

The board members and their bimbasssistants were all still gathered around the far end of the table.

“Gentlemen,” Warburton said. “Please have a seat so we can get to the first order of business on the agenda.”

“There is no fucking agenda!” shouted Collins.

“I have the agenda right here,” I said, pushing a piece of paper forward, glad now Beth had talked me out of writing it in purple crayon, which had been my first instinct, this place being such a joke.

“I didn’t get an agenda. This meeting is not valid or legal!” protested Crisp.

I nodded to Beth. She pulled her phone out of some magical place on her magical body. It had to have been magical, because the clothes she was wearing looked like she’d been dipped in liquid silk, they fit that closely. And they certainly didn’t have any pockets or place to hide a phone. I would have known. Hey, I’m allowed to look!

She murmured into the phone, then made it disappear and nodded to us.

Collins was still muttering and threatening to have us thrown out, but I noticed the urgency had gone out of his dire warnings.

A minute later, a young man in an expensive suit appeared, carrying a laptop.

“Ah, Clark. If you would open Mr. Crisp’s laptop, he will enter his password.”

The man opened it and put it in front of the skinny company secretary, who stared at it, stretched a hand out to the keyboard and then paused.

“Mr. Crisp,” said Dallas. “I suggest you do not try to do anything silly. Mr. Clark would be forced to prevent that from happening. Which could be ... unfortunate.”

Everybody in the room was abruptly aware that Mr Clark was suddenly a lot more threatening than an audit clerk should seem. All without moving a muscle, which was quite frankly awesome. Crisp entered his password and opened his emails. When he went a little greyer and began to sweat I knew he’d found the notice.

Warburton continued smoothly, as if all of this was completely normal. “The notification was also posted on the company bulletin board as required, and in the national newspapers. None of which was completely necessary as we also have written agreement to short notice.”

Okay – the email was bogus. A friend of mine had done some jiggery-pokey on it and managed to get the date and time appear to be two days ago, instead of two hours, and to also make it seem to have been read and acknowledged. Don’t ask me how, I just have friends. But the notice board thing was correct, as was the newspaper notice. I didn’t feel the need to mention that the notice was fairly small and appeared amongst the sex adverts in the back of a newspaper with the smallest national circulation we could find, certainly not one that would normally be read by businessmen. The notice board was in the factory canteen of a small branch of the company – in Scotland. It had taken some deep thought to come up with that one. It was teetering right on the edge, but it was legal.

Warburton tapped the table.

“Right, if you gentlemen are more comfortable standing around, then we can begin. Mr Bentley, if you would read the first item on the agenda.”

I rose to my feet, adjusted my jacket and fastened the lowest button. My suit was cheap as chips, but it followed the same general pattern as all the expensive ones. Then I adjusted my tie and cleared my throat. All eyes followed my every move. Even Marie’s, although she seemed to not want to look at me, she was so furious.

“Thank you, Mr Warburton. Gentlemen, the first item on the agenda is a motion of no confidence in the board of this company, and that all members of said board be replaced with immediate effect.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then an uproar broke out that would have suited any bar during a cup final game. Some were laughing like donkeys, others were roaring like bears and some were squealing like pigs. So perhaps it would have been better suited to any bar during a showing of Animal Farm.

My wife now appeared to be so embarrassed at my behaviour that she couldn’t look at me. She was slumped in a seat, shrinking right down in the hope that nobody would notice her.

“Any discussion of item one gentlemen?”

“What’s to discuss?” roared Collins. He looked squarely at me. “I know you. You’re Bentley’s shit-shovelling husband, aren’t you – the brickie. Perhaps, instead of just using your muscles, you should have used your brain and taken some advice from her. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s really good at it too.”

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively as looked around the room at his colleagues, who followed his lead and took seats at the table, smirking at Marie and me in turn. If her straying had been unnoticed before now, it was certainly no longer any mystery. She had been fully outed. Red-faced and a little tearful, she shrank even lower in her chair.

“You morons may have set this up, but you have obviously not got the faintest idea of how a business works. This is a limited company with shares that are sold on the stock market, not some turkey farm out beyond the M25. You don’t get any say in the running of this business ... my business. Now be a good little cunty boy and fuck off! Get out of my face! You were amusing with all your talk of agendas, but now you’re just pissing me off!”

Warburton didn’t turn a hair.

“Any other discussion on the first item on the agenda?”

When all he got was sneers and laughter from all twelve board members, and sniggers and disdain from the assistants that stood behind them, he held his silence for a moment.

“Then this item is put to the vote on the motion that: all the board members of Acme Limited be sacked and replaced with immediate effect. All in favour?”

I raised my hand.

“You?” sneered Collins. “You have shares?”

I nodded, and Marie looked at me in surprise.

“How many?” Collins asked.

“One hundred shares.” I said. “Bought and paid for.”

Marie looked down at her lap again. The humiliation of her being associated with me in any way was perfectly clear. A hundred shares was not even a hundredth of one percent. I was the village idiot in the finest university in the land, compared to the businessmen she associated with daily. She was an acolyte at their feet, eager to learn all she could from the masters, whereas I wasn’t even smart enough to be allowed to empty the chamber pots. I saw her slip her wedding ring off her finger and put it in her pocket. Seeing that didn’t make me sad, just surprised at how little it bothered me. I thought I would at least care a little.

Beth smiled at me, and I wrinkled my nose at her in return. A little bunny nose. She liked that and her smile grew wider.

Collins was howling with laughter. “A hundred shares? What’s that worth? Two pounds?”

Warburton continued, unruffled. “Those against the motion?”

The laughter continued. “Then if there are no votes against...”

Piper suddenly sobered up. “I vote against!”

“What?” Collins guffawed, wiping his eyes. “Are you taking this seriously?”

“The vote was about to go against us. He voted his 100 shares, but nobody was voting against him.”

Collins suddenly sobered up and stared at me, his bushy eyebrows drawn low over his eyes as he frowned.

“You tricky little cunt! You planned this! You planned this all the time! And you almost got us to fall into your trap, laughing all the way. Very clever. Well, I own eighty three million shares, and I vote against this proposal. Now get the fuck out of here and take your lackeys with you. And if you ever enter this building again, I’ll have you locked up so tight your arse will squeak every time you breathe!”

Suddenly there was a small forest of raised hands voting against the motion. Things were not looking so good for the away team.

Warburton noted down each vote against the proposal, checking them against the share register to see how many shares each of them possessed.

“That is a total of just under 242 million shares against the proposal. 27.62% of all shares issued vote against the proposal. The proposal is accepted.”

“Get out of my building, you fucking little piece of...”

“What do you mean accepted?” Crisp was standing and shouting at Warburton.

“Wait, what... ?” gasped Collins. “I thought he meant rejected.”

“No Mr Collins. My meaning was clear. I meant accepted. The motion has passed.”

The hubbub now was full of protest and denial rather than laughter and hooting and that other monkey shit stuff they had been doing up until now.

“Look, Warrington or whatever your name is, you can’t cheat these things. You saying something is so doesn’t just make it happen.”

“Of course it doesn’t, Mr Collins. I am as trained in business procedure as ... well actually more than any of you. I know exactly what I am saying.”

“Okay, then say it in plain fucking English, because right now you’re talking out of your arse, motherfucker!”

“Mr Collins, the numbers are very simple. 27.62% of the shares – those owned by the people at this table – voted to reject the motion. 58.98% of the shares voted to accept the motion. Therefore the motion is passed. I don’t understand how to make it any clearer.”

“What?” asked Collins. “How do you get 58% out of 100 shares.”

“You don’t Mr Collins, you don’t even get 1% out of 100 shares. How could you? This is a public company, traded on the stock exchange as you said. There are almost a billion shares all told.”

“So where does the 58% come from?”

I stood up again. “It comes from proxies, which give me the right to vote their shares. And I vote to throw the lot of you perverted, thieving hogs out on the street. Which I just did.”

Marie was now staring at me with wide eyes. How the hell did I know about things like proxies? I was a builder, not a financier. Where would I have even heard the word?

Collins was staring at me, wide-eyed.

“You don’t have that many proxies, you can’t. It’s impossible!”

“Ah but I do, Collins. I simply asked for them and they gave them to me. For this one meeting. For one day.”

“That would have cost you millions!”

“No, just finding the right people to talk to. And most of them really don’t like you.”

It had taken weeks to do it. Ever since the moment I had overheard two of the board members talking in the executive toilets while I had been up in the ceiling trying to find the source of a leak. Marie had arranged me the job as a fob to her feelings of guilt, I think.

“That Bentley bitch is so fine,” one of them said – I think it was Murray, sales director.

Only one Bentley in my town is a bitch, so I knew who they were talking about. Of course, the fact that she was working one floor down might have given it away as well.

“You think Collins is going to share her ass on the team building this time?” asked the other. I think it might have been Marie’s immediate boss.

“He likes to have her tucked under his wing where he can pork her to his heart’s content. Although it’s been over two years now, so he may have got tired of her cunt by now. Perhaps he’ll share this year. I thought he was going to get generous at the Christmas party, but the fuckhead wasn’t going for it. He had her under the table and sucking his cock even while her husband was looking for her. Greedy cunt.”

“Tucked under his fat gut, you mean. I’m surprised he hasn’t ironed her flat by now.”

I heard the sound of laughter and then two zips and the door opening and closing as they left.

“Wash your hands, you unsavoury pigs,” I called after the door closed.

My head was spinning and I wondered how much it would hurt if I toppled sideways and fell through the false ceiling. Part of me wished it would happen, maybe it would make the hurt inside less.

Now it all made sense. Oh, I knew she’d been cheating for a while now. A look in her eyes to an innocent question from me had raised suspicion. And when that gets its dander up, it doesn’t go back down easily. I had noticed slight changes in dress, especially underwear. The phone calls carefully taken in the other room. Sexy time had become scarcer, then too often, then scarcer again. All the classic signs.

But I had been looking for a cheating partner amongst our circle of friends. I mean, Marie is a fox – all long black hair and slinky curves no matter which side you viewed her from. And always as fine as it comes, with hair, make-up and clothes all from the finest and most expensive places. Marie did not stint when it came to Marie. That was for sure. So she would prowl up, never down.

Sex with her was fine as well, although there was always a treacherous little thought within me after a bout of good loving that wondered if her responses to me had come from an Ikea instruction booklet: do this and then this, then turn it over and screw that, and then pound that and hope there are no bits left over. In other words, a well-learned way of having really good sex rather than a natural progression of desire.

I had always felt a little treacherous for thinking that. I never considered that treachery would come from her.

So, I had been looking at the wrong page in the cheating partner catalogue. I had imagined her with a big, fine-looking, flashy guy with an enormous nob. Not a little yapping terrier with a sense of self-importance only slightly bigger than his belly.

It was over two years then, since the foul-mouthed old lecher had first hoisted that belly up onto her naked body and prodded at her with his cock. For a moment I wondered whether he was better at it than me, or if he had a longer cock. Then, still perched in the rafters, I began to giggle at the thought that he would need a much longer cock for it to reach beyond his gut and actually get it into her. Sadly, my giggles turned into tears, and I wept for a while at my lost love. The final end of a marriage, even one in its terminal stages, will do that to you.

I sniffled for a while, feeling sorry for myself. Then I got angry instead and thought of murder-suicide, then just murder, and then finally downgraded it to maybe acid washing his car. Finally, I put the stupid stuff away and began to think properly.

I spoke to a friend, who gave me a couple of little plastic things and told me what to do, which I carefully wrote down. The next day, I walked back into the building with my toolkit and began to search for that pesky drip once more, pausing only to plug the plastic things into unattended laptops and press the buttons in the order I had written on my list. While I waited, I whistled loudly and banged about the office, swearing loudly about the damned leak and carefully searching everywhere. Always best to hide stuff in plain sight. Finally, I pulled the plastic things out again and walked out again, still whistling.

It’s amazing the variety of people you meet when you build houses for them. And if you’re lucky, how many good friends you can make if you treat them fairly, with respect and humour. Another friend analysed the data from the plastic things. That took me on a roundabout journey to Mr Warburton, who introduced me to Dallas and Holmes. A long round-table discussion in a bar gave me the answer to my problem, although the method had to be on me. They couldn’t do more than gently hint as to what that might be.

So in the end I looked up the person I needed to ask, and went and asked her. I explained the situation, and she even looked sympathetic. I then showed her what the data had said and she looked very troubled instead. And when I told her of my plan, she laughed and gave me what I needed. She was in charge of a large pension fund and worried that Acme’s current board would crash the stock price, with her having invested large amounts in their shares.